If you've been watching the news, you've probably heard that America is going to crumble into the sea in a couple days if the sequester spending cuts go into effect. No less than the President Of The United States has been leading the death knell, as he describes the plagues that will beset our once strong republic should the 2.4% sequester spending cuts ($85 billion for FY2013) be implemented. For prespective, that $85 billion cut would come out of a bloated $3.8 trillion federal spending budget.

Even though the 1999-2007 housing bubble and subsequent housing meltdown/financial crisis/recession was a monument to government stupidity and interference in the market, the statist backlash from it was a call for yet more government interference (and likely more stupidity) in the market. This is somewhat akin to hiring Charles Ponzi to fix your financial portfolio, but this is how statists roll. When their interference fails, they think they just haven't interfered enough. To illustrate the point, the aftermath congressional legislation to allegedly fix our financial situation was championed by Barney Frank (D-VT) and Chris Dodd (D-CT), two guys who were up to their eyeballs in the original housing mess, two guys who headed their respective banking committees in the House and Senate as the problem grew, two guys who denied there was a problem until the whole thing blew up in their faces, two guys who then blamed everyone but themselves. Then those same two foxes were charged with guarding the new legislative henhouse. Go figure. Their incompetence was rewarded with more responsibility. You couldn't make this stuff up, nobody would believe it.

Total government revenue (all levels of government combined) comprises 32.29% of the nation's entire GDP. In simple terms, this means that for every dollar spent or invested, the government takes about 33 cents, one third. That sounds like an awful lot of our hard-earned money going to the government to me, far too much really, but liberals like Pelosi keep telling us the government doesn't have enough revenue. How is that possible ? It sounds crazy, given all the money the government takes from us already.

The alleged revenue shortage is possible because total government spending comprises 41.38% of GDP. Doesn't this make it obvious that the deficit/debt problem lies with too much spending, not a lack of revenue ? It should. Total government spending thus far this year comes to $6.46 trillion and counting. It seems like that should be enough to fix our bridges, but I guess not, according to Obama's State Of The Union (SOTU) address.

Massive debt, high unemployment, rising prices, falling wages, the loss of our manufacturing base, increasing government dependency, unsustainable entitlements....President Obama mentioned some of these things in his State Of The Union address, but I didn't hear much in the way of serious solutions. Instead, I heard the same old "tax the rich" mentality, along with suggestions that the federal government jack up spending, er, I mean, "investing" on practically every issue Obama raised. After saying "the American people don’t expect government to solve every problem", Obama recommended more government as the answer to virtually every issue he raised.

A couple months ago, I went to see Steven Spielberg's movie, Lincoln. It took place during the last months of the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln was trying to get the 13th Amendment to the Constitution passed by Congress in order to outlaw slavery. In the movie, two main principles were elicited that prohibited slavery. They are foundational American principles:

"I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year." - Barack Obama, 2008 (link)

“The sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.” - President Obama, in the third presidential debate, Oct. 22, 2012

The Washington Post Fact Checker gave Obama four Pinocchios for the above whopper. It WAS the White House that proposed the sequester as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, and it was enacted into law. For those of you who don't know what the sequester is, it is a round of automatic spending cuts that will take place on March 1st if Congress doesn't act to implement it's own targeted spending cuts. True to form, Congress has not acted, which is why the sequester is looming. To be more specific, it is the Democrat-led Senate that has not acted. The Republican-led House has passed two bills to avoid the sequester. The Senate has become the place where budget proposals go to die. You're doing a heckuva job, Harry !!! Or not.

When President Bush waterboarded three members of Al Qaida after 9/11 to extract information about future Al Qaida activities, Barack Obama disagreed. Here's what Obama said about waterboarding:

"Waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don’t think that’s just my opinion; that’s the opinion of many who’ve examined the topic. And that’s why I put an end to these practices. I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do — not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are."